


You are half-alive.

by spacepuck



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Doomed Timeline, F/M, Sadstuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-21
Updated: 2012-01-21
Packaged: 2017-10-29 21:48:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/324519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacepuck/pseuds/spacepuck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your name is KARKAT VANTAS, and you are bleeding...<br/>-<br/>Your name is TEREZI PYROPE, and you’re pretty certain you’re either dying or in a land of liquid flavor, and in that land you are in the resort pool and wading peacefully, quietly, without stirring.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You are half-alive.

Your name is KARKAT VANTAS, and you are bleeding. You are bleeding and your blood is everywhere. It’s seeping into the cracks of the floor, slipping through the broken soles of your shoes, weaving between the threading of your dark jeans. It’s drying against your skin, and the usual grey tone is quickly turning into flaky splotches of disgusting dark red.

Your blood is spreading and everyone can see it. There’s no hiding now.

You can’t move. The one thing keeping you alive is beating erratically inside your chest, a frantic thudding of warriors running towards battle, stomp stomp stomp thud thud thud thud chaaarge-!

Wow, that was a stupid fucking metaphor you just made. You’re not a warrior running into battle. You’re not a warrior at all. You’re just a pathetic grub, crumpled on the floor and letting your secret, the only fucking secret your life depended on keeping, run out of your body like a flooded waterfall crashing down and spraying everywhere.

Everyone looks at the bottom of the waterfall to see the crashing spray.

Everyone is looking at your blood.

Granted, most of these people are dead. But in the back of your mind, some paranoid siren is going off, screaming, “YOU FUCKER, YOU STUPID ASS FUCKER, THEY KNOW AND THEY CAN SEE AND NOW YOU’RE DYING WAY TO GO ASSFACE FUCK THIS AND FUCK YOU.”

There doesn’t seem to be noise for a long while, aside from the voice in your head and your think-pan pounding against your ears. You breathe shakily and then sputter, your blood catching onto the cracks in your lips and hitting the back of your teeth. Eyes squeezed shut, you curse quietly, your voice unable to make its way through your throat as it trips over the liquid slipping back down from your mouth.

“Fucking- _damn it…_ ”

You’re not even going to try to get up. Your clothes are soaked with your blood, heavy and weighing your weary body down, as if trying to pull you into the floor and wrap around you, whispering, _“This is who you are. This is your blood. Your disgusting mutant blood. You disgusting fucking mutant.”_

Taking in a small breath, you open your eyes a little. At first, there’s only red, red everywhere, why so much red, are you bleeding that much? And then, after sliding your arm up and thumbing some runny stuff from your eyes – you sure as fuck aren’t crying, you better not be crying – you’re able to see a little clearer. You look past the Red Sea, unable to cross it and unable to make it go away, and squint. There’s a body. There’s some other pool of blood, and it takes your brain a moment to settle down and comprehend what color it is.

It startles you that it actually looks like a sea.

C’mon, Karkat. The color of water is blue.

Light blue.

A pretty, light blue.

And this blood is light blue.

Just like.

“Oh, no.”

Your heart is going again, and you can feel your arms flailing uselessly, trying to get up but instead spreading the light film of red further across the floor, and oh no oh no oh no you’ve got to get up and you can’t and fuck fuck _fuck-_

Somehow you end up on your hands, and you almost want to vomit because you can feel your blood sliding under your palms and knees, seeping through your pants forcefully. You shouldn’t be bleeding this much. Why the hell are you bleeding this much?

“Fuck fuck fuck.”

Your voice is pretty damn pathetic at this point. It kind of sounds like…what the hell are they…those colored floating circles that you have seen around John while he rampages about baked goods and wearing a really stupid pointy hat.

Your voice is similar to when a small hole is punctured into the round floating device and the air starts hissing out.

Yeah.

You sound like a fucking dying man.

You are a dying man. Or, no.

A dying boy.

Sliding yourself across your own puddle of blood makes you feel queasy. The warm liquid turning cold under your touch doesn’t bother you so much. No, just the sheer quantity of it and how bright a shade of red it actually is what makes you want to blow dying boy chunks all over your blood-logged self and the blue ocean in front of you.

A small shiver quakes your body as your fingertips graze the light blue blood. The filmy liquid slides against and overtakes your own, creating a border you must cross.

It never occurred to you that another’s blood could be colder than your own. It isn’t much colder, but the difference is there, and the difference makes your fingers twitch.

You are now fully inside the ocean.

“Fuck, fuck – _heuhhh_ – fuck, fuck…”

Turning away, you cough. Small droplets of red fall into and disappear within the blue. Your elbows quake under the weight you’re putting on them, and you just want to collapse, just want to fall and stop and never think and disregard all of the blood and forget about what’s going on and

 _YOU FUCKER YOU STUPID FUCKER SAVE HER STOP-_

just fall and drown and

 _-YOU’RE BEING STUPID YOU’RE STUPID WAKE UP WAKE UP YOU IDIOT-_

You look up and see her. A sharp inhale rips at your throat, and unwillingly you cough, the smallest of bright candy red droplets falling onto her cheek. You almost expect this to awaken her, as if this is one of Tavros’ stupid little fairy tales.

She doesn’t stir. Her stomach rises and falls, as if she’s sleeping, as if there’s no pain and no blood and nothing wrong, but the gaping hole in the middle of her torso spilling a river of teal blood seems to prove otherwise.

Her breathing is shallow and quick. She seems to have learned that breathing normally is equivalent to swallowing needles and letting them fly around inside your lungs until you’re forced to cough. You can’t tell if she knows that you’re there, your face right above hers as you swallow back every single drip of blood sliding upwards from your throat.

It’s inevitable as you fail to snort back a drop of blood coming from your nose. It falls against her lips, and for a moment you’re wondering, what if fairy tales are real, what if this can bring her back, what if this wakes her up.

The drop of blood slides between her lips, cracked and still, until only a pale red streak is left behind as evidence.

You stare at her for a while. You expect something, maybe a twitch, maybe a noise, something to indicate that she knows you’re there. But nothing happens. Not for a while. That entire while, you listen to yourself, screaming inside your head, bashing you down and clubbing you with spiked rods.

Terezi.

Dear fucking god please don’t die.

Terezi.

“Terezi, god – _heuhh_ – god _damn_ it.”

You sit back, leaning onto your hands as her blood weighs down your clothing. Your head drops, your neck made of broken rubber bands, and you squeeze your eyes shut.

Fuck the world.

Fuck the world and every single fucking living being on it.

The room is silent, aside from the small rough patches in your inhales and exhales and the quiet breaths coming from the girl beside you. You sit there in her blood for a while, and you feel yourself going weak as darkness creeps in around the corners of your eyes and your hands begin to go numb.

You look over at Terezi. Her lips twitch a little, but you can’t tell if she’s talking as your heart pounding in your ears drowns out outside noise. You move closer, groaning a little as your head spins.

“What?” you ask. You squint your eyes and lean a little closer to hear her, if she even said anything.

The only noise you pick up on is her raspy breathing.

You wait.

And wait.

And.

“Red.”

The sudden whisper startles you a little. You lean closer, your nose bumping hers as your head begins to weigh down and your vision darkens.

“What…?”

You can hear her smile as you close your eyes.

“Can-dy. _Red._ ”

-

Your name is TEREZI PYROPE, and you’re pretty certain you’re either dying or in a land of liquid flavor, and in that land you are in the resort pool and wading peacefully, quietly, without stirring. You try to swing your arms through the liquid slowly, but it’s not very deep and it’s cold and you are truly beginning to consider suing the owners for such a shitty pool, what the hell.

You can hear something coming near you, but you aren’t entirely sure what it is. It sounds much like a deflating pool ring, that inflatable toy pool-goers float on, hissing as if a pin punctured it. It wheezes, cursing to itself, and you can almost feel the liquid around you stir as it slides closer.

A burning feeling centers on your stomach. You figure it’s the sun beating down on your black shirt and it absorbs the heat, pressing against you dryly, until you try to move again and the spot _hurts._

This is not normal.

What’s happening?

A hiss of air escapes you, and suddenly the scenery changes. You are no longer in a wonderful land of liquid cherry and berry flavor. You are no longer floating in a pool. There is not a broken pool toy near you. The sun isn’t warming your stomach.

No. And you quickly realize what’s happening. There’s a reason why the liquid is thin and the floor is cold. There’s a reason why you’re in pain.

Oh god.

The thing that was moving toward you. You quickly realize that it’s Karkat, and you want to move your hand and you want to get up and you want to make sure this isn’t real and he’s just reaching out to you, your knight in bloody armor, to pull you out of this painful dream. Maybe even take you to that tasty resort and go for a delicious swim.

And then he wheezes. A droplet of liquid hits your lips, and you know instantly that this is real. The scent of sharp cherry hits your senses, the drop touches your tongue, and you know.

He speaks, and you almost don’t recognize him. His voice is too quiet and hoarse, not controlled by anger but by fear, and it makes you wonder how long he was just waiting for you to hear him. Of course, usually you _can_ hear him, it’s not at all difficult, but now you wonder how long he was laying there in silence, or how long it took him to crawl over to you, or how long he’s been waiting to get a response, a movement, a noise, anything from you.

You feel so sorry for him.

Taking in a long and painful breath, you mumble.

“Your blood…”

He moves closer in question, and you wish you could clear your throat but the energy to do so is gone.

“Red,” you say, simply. His nose touches yours in question, and you smile, because you can feel the heat rushing off of his face. It reminds you of when he would blush or get angry and how _adorable_ he looked. But, you have a feeling his face isn’t hot because of any of that, embarrassment or otherwise. You breathe his scent in slowly before continuing.

“Can-dy. _Red._ ”

He seems to freeze on top of you. His face, the color of charcoal and the taste of black licorice with beads of warm cherry cordial, is trembling. Why, you’re not sure. Maybe he’s cold. Your blood is colder than his, and he’s probably soaking in it at this point – how badly are you bleeding?

You bring a heavy hand to your stomach, inching it across the little sea. You prod the wound, and it causes you to wince and hiss again, which causes Karkat to pick up his head a little.

You can tell he’s looking down at you. What his expression is, you can’t read it. He’s either pissed that you hit your head against his nose or worried about the thought of dying or worried about _you_ dying and honestly, it could be all three with the guy. You settle again and muster up some energy to clear your throat, which aches with acid.

“Kar?” You’re only able to mumble out the first half of his name. You think he might hate it, but then again, he was always adorable when he was mad over little nicknames.

He wheezes and spats to the side before responding with a raspy, “What?”

You swallow, and it hurts, but not much worse than breathing in and letting a swarm of wasps attack your lungs. You aren’t completely sure of what you wanted to say to him, or what you would say to him, but your mouth acts before your mind and you end up asking, “Are we dying?”

He’s silent. Instead of replying, you hear him move, shifting the currents of the bordering bodies of liquid, mixing them and causing them to become not two completely different seas, but one united. He groans and curses, and finally, after some close listening to the shifting of his body and the position of his voice, you realize that he’s laying on his side, facing you, holding his wound tightly.

“ _Nngh._ ‘Rez…”

Rez.

He almost never calls you Rez. In fact, you can’t remember him ever calling you that (of course, your brain is really beginning to feel numb and dark, so your memory is failing quickly). Maybe it was just the fact he’s not able to say your entire name without pain. Maybe his breathing is failing.

Nevertheless, you roll yourself onto your side, curled inward a little more than he as you cup your wound in a hand. It’s only then that you realize that your glasses are missing.

This is not the time to worry about your delicious glasses. In fact, you really aren’t worrying about them at all. All you’re able to worry about is the here and now, with the Cherry-Berry sea soaking two wading, half-alive bodies, bodies that can hardly function but can still feel, that can just barely whisper but can still portray every stroke of fear and worry and regret with even the slightest movements.

You reach across the borderline, and your fingers brush against Karkat’s. It takes a few moments for him to respond, and when he extends his fingers to yours, you’re only able to curl your pinky finger around his. You squeeze, and he squeezes back, and the two of you lay next to each other, wheezing painfully and unable to look or smell each other, because his eyes are closed and your senses are failing. The faintest twinges of Karkat’s smell comes to you, and the aroma is comforting enough that, even with the pain and confusion, maybe you’ll be able to drift off before anything can get possibly worse.

“Kar,” you murmur again. You can’t tell if your voice can reach him anymore, so you squeeze his pinky in hopes he’ll respond.

He doesn’t respond for a while. You know you’re crying, you can feel the thin streaks racing down your nose and across your lips, down your cheek and into the related colored pool. He squeezes back, the smallest of twitches, but doesn’t speak. You swallow. It burns. The wound, your throat, the tears, the cold blood, it burns. This situation is numbing. You take in a breath, inhaling sewing pins.

“We’ll – _heuhhhh!_ – getoutofthis.”

You cough and sputter, trying to repeat your words through coughing up teal blood and crying and holding onto his limp pinky finger for all that you have left, but you can’t get the words out. They tumble out in messes of “we, we, lluh lluh, Kar, _Kar-kat._ ”

He doesn’t respond. He stops holding onto your finger. He doesn’t smell of strong licorice and cherry medicine. His blood, the warmest of all the blood types, his tasty little secret, has run cold and spoiled.

Either your senses have finally failed, or he has failed your senses.

Whichever way they story ends, your vision, as dark as it already is, only becomes darker, and darker. Your mind numbs further, your body weakens, lets go of the weight and the burden and the pain, numbing it all. Really, you can’t even tell that you’re dying. In fact, it feels more like floating.

The very last signal to run through your brain, the last wire that hasn’t been shut down, sends one more message. A faint whisper in your ear.

 _“There’s a reason why you liked red the most.”_


End file.
